Paris culture

Le Louvre

The desk clerk at Hotel Eber Mars lets us leave our bags at the hotel
while we tour the city on our last day before we have to leave for Rome in the afternoon.
First stop of the day is the Louvre. We each get another Metro day pass and are on
our way.

We hit our first major crowd of the trip. We find
the Mona Lisa and we can barely fit into the room. The barrier keeps you
at least 15 feet from the painting and it’s covered in glass that reflects
the light of the room. You get a better view from a post card! Venus de Milo
is a much better exhibit because she rises above the crowd in her room.

I’m looking for
the Etruscan sarcophagus and get us lost. We pass through the greco-roman
room of statues probably three or four times. Kaitlyn takes the map and leads us
right to the Etruscans. I decide it’s time to see some paintings, but the 4th floor
18th century French paintings don’t do much for any of us, so we decide to
leave. We pass through the greco-roman room one more time and mom notices
a sculpture of a woman lying strangely with her torso facing away and
her head twisted all the way around toward us. I notice her name, the ‘goddess’
Hermaphrodite. I wonder, hmm, and walk around to the other side. Sure
enough, there lies the hidden secret and perhaps the reason she is turned
around that way. heh.

My feet are killing me by now, but
next is more walking and shopping along the Champs Élysées. I didn’t think of it
at the time, but I should have bought some arches or new shoes. Oh well, I survive.

Champs Élysées

Unfortunately, we only have a couple of hours to enjoy strolling along and
shopping because we have to make our way back to the hotel and to the train station.
It’s also drizzling a little. We do manage to squeeze in a meal and order
some sandwiches and eat outside. We make it into a couple of stores, but
I don’t think we buy anything. We see the Arc de Triomphe from a distance
and head back to the hotel to get our bags. Mom leaves the hotel manager a nice tip.
He’s been very friendly and speaks English really well, even without much
of an accent.

Now we all have our bags in tow on the Metro near rush hour.
We arrive at Bercy station and Gary cannot find the tickets—no Eurail
pass, no reservations, the whole money belt is missing. Go ahead and laugh,
but you try putting that pouch full of tickets and papers around your waist
with 30 lbs. of excess fat hanging over your belt. The belt’s place is in my bag.
I remember verifying that I had it when
we picked up our bags, so I was afraid I had left them at the desk of the
hotel. I run upstairs to a payphone and call the hotel desk. While he is checking,
my phone card is a minute from
expiring. He returns and tells me he doesn’t have the tickets. I don’t have
time to recharge the phone, but am relaxed because for some reason I think I
know that I have the tickets somewhere. I confidently mosey down the stairs, open the bag, reach
to where they are supposed to be, and lo, there they are. I simply reached past
them before, almost as if I expected not to find them. Kaitlyn smiles and says that she
prayed. Perhaps it was while I was on the phone and felt that calm come
over me.

I go to the counter to cancel the extra couchette bed reservation and get back €30.
Woo-hoo! We’re off to Italy.
But before we arrive, I have another scare when the controller asks for the
passports and I can’t find mine. Again, I had it in my hand when I entered the
train, so I know I had it
somewhere; that is, unless it fell in the hallway as I stumbled on the train.
No, it didn’t fall in the hallway, luckily, but it did fall out of my pocket
through a crack in the seat and onto the floor underneath. whew What prompted
me to look there? Logical place? I dunno, ask Kaitlyn.

The 3-person sleeper car is nice. It comes with its own sink of non-potable water,
and some bottled sparkling water and other nicities in the medicine cabinet, including
toilet seat covers, extra towelettes, and wet-napkins. Italian sparkling water is
different than in Northern Europe. The bubbles are so fine that I can barely tell they are
there. I like that.